I’m not posting a lot of news these days, actually I’ve pretty much given up on it save for special occasions – like this one: there had already been some rumours about a new restoration of the first Beatles movie A Hard Day’s Night since the beginning of this year, but now it’s certain: Criterion will release the movie on June 24th as a Blu-Ray and DVD combo set. A new 4k transfer has been made, this time apparently in the correct aspect ratio of 1.75:1, and in addition to a remastered mono track, new stereo and 5.1 mixes have been produced with the music this time coming from the original multitrack masters and with the involvement of Giles Martin, the son of the Beatles’ producer George Martin. There will also be numerous extras, including an audio commentary, some of the interviews from the 2002 release, the 1994 documentary You Can’t Do That (which has been out of print on DVD for a long time) and a lot more.

The press release from Criterion has all the details, and the announcement on the Home Theater Forum has the full poster including the crucial information that the two DVDs of the set will include all the extras of the Blu-Ray. There will also be a single-disc DVD release, but it will be sadly missing most of the extras. The price on Amazon.com for the three-disc set is $34.99, but if you ordered early enough you were able to get it for about $25 plus shipping. A full review of the new release will be coming in July!